> Rather, i suspect there should be some small infrastructural component which pulls messages off a queue and sends them to workers with HTTP, via a load balanc

> Rather, i suspect there should be some small infrastructural component which pulls messages off a queue and sends them to workers with HTTP, via a load balancer AWS SNS can deliver a notification to an HTTP/HTTPS end point. If your design permits the use of a hosted notification service then I highly recommend you explore SNS. And yes, I do agree with all the concerns you have raised! In my company we use Kestrel with a couple of consumers. Load asymmetry and worker health check is a real pain for us.